Off Topic Politics Thread

You think? He was in the good times. Blair was in the good times. People have found out what his policies turned into. Same PFI money filtering schemes as his pal Blair.

 

Trump's speech was based on that Nixon themed one.

 

"Beloved" is too strong, but Bill Clinton is still well-liked. Or at least not detested, which in this day and age counts as well-liked. People still don't like Bush so some things that perhaps really should be pinned to Bill Clinton (Patriot Act) get attached to Bush instead.

But you are right that Clinton won't have that much influence. He is mostly well-liked BECAUSE he stays out of the spotlight and everyone remembers the late 90's as seemingly happier times.

He'll make a nice speech at the convention (always his forte) and pop up here and there as would be expected but I do not think you will see the Democrats try to trot him out there. In fact, I expect they will keep him out of the limelight as much as possible and he'll only show up enough to keep it respectable so it doesn't look like they are hiding him (but they are).

 

Picking Kaine as a VP is a mistake, IMO.

He's a nice guy, hard for anyone to attack him personally. But they won't really need to. He's pretty much run-of-the-mill, reliably liberal. So the right will just portray him as another big government leftists, and the Sanders crowd will see him as another establishment safe pick. He's also really un-charismatic and a boring speaker.

The strategic thing for Clinton was that Kaine is from the swing state of Virginia, so that will secure her vote. Except that people in Virginia don't really like Kaine that much. The state is pretty much red, and only keeps electing Democrats because the moderate conservatives on the East Coast are somewhat reasonable but have to battle with the loonies in the rest of the state and they split the vote and a Democrat sneaks in.

If Clinton really wanted to secure Virginia, she would have picked Mark Warner who is Democrat but actually rather popular among the mainstream GOP. The problem is that Warner barely won his last election, so they think he's weak. IMO, the reality is that ONLY Warner could have won that last election as a Democrat. Kaine probably would have done worse.

On the bright side if Clinton does win, Kaine is highly qualified and I would expect him to do a good job though it will only win him enemies.

 

Kaine's a logical pick. I think that they would have gone with Sherrod Brown if not for the fact that the Senate hangs in the balance, and Kasich would get to select his replacement.

He's Joe Biden without being somewhat off his rocker, basically. Though the occasional appearances of Crazy Uncle Joe who cuddles biker chicks and eats nothing but ice cream will be sorely missed.

 

Don't get me wrong. I would happily vote for Kaine over Clinton or Trump. He's the best person on the ticket by miles.

He is useless in this current political environment though. Which actually speaks rather highly of him. Anyone with even a small degree of principle, intelligence, and actual desire to help the country is useless right now.

 

As you are over there in the thick of it, is Trump likely to win? All we get in the news is lots of him and little of Clinton so it's seems like he has the momentum.

 

Honestly, I don't know.

We have the stupid electoral college system here in the US, where votes get proportioned by states. And those polls all show Clinton with a fairly decent advantage even if the popular vote is close.

But that's if the election took place today. When it comes to predicting the trends, no one has any clue. They can't figure out why anyone is voting for Trump in the first place (you can take from that what you like ).

In the end I think it will come down to who actually shows up at the polls. I think there are a larger than normal percent of Trump supporters who won't vote. A lot of them are trolls a la Milo Yiannopolis. They just want to piss everyone off, and they don't actually have to vote for Trump to do that. They can just say the voted for Trump. There are also a lot of anti-establishment types who are attracted to Trump, but they are so anti-establishment that they never vote.

OTOH, I think there are also a larger than normal percent of people who don't show up on polls who will vote for Trump. These include cranky old people who hate when people call them up and think it's none of your business asking them fool questions. And people who don't want to admit they like Trump because they don't want to be perceived as racists/imbeciles (some of them might actually be, some not).

How many mainstream Republicans will grit their teeth and vote for Trump vs gritting their teeth and voting for Clinton vs abstain? How many college kids will stick to their ideals and vote for a third party or abstain vs voting for Trump? How many blue collar union people will vote for Trump because they are worried about immigrants taking jobs vs voting for Clinton because Trump is anti-union?

Will there be more shootings? What about terrorists?

The thing most in Trump's favor is that he is untouchable. He's made every blunder in the book, been caught in lie after lie, no one knows what his policies are, he's insulted every other candidate and basically done everything you are NOT supposed to do. And it doesn't seem phase his supporters at all.

OTOH, Clinton has been in politics for a long time. And not just her, but her husband. So there are all sorts of things from the past that can be dredged up to hit her on. And she's not well-liked anyway.

So basically this gives Trump free license to just try to disrupt things in as many ways as he can. I think the more people see the election as a circus, or just start hating the whole thing, the more it suits Trump. Clinton has to play by the traditional rules to win. Trump has no rules.

 

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I read somewhere that there were 90 million white non voters at the last election. Trump will obviously be aiming to reduce that number.

 

I expect Trump to play that card, close to election day; and be more overt in addressing these people directly.

 

HE won't need to if the Democrats have too many more days like today.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36886159

A legal challenge to Jeremy Corbyn's right to automatically stand in the Labour leadership contest is being heard.

 

If you want to get a sense of the demographic breakdown in the US, and how even small shifts within groups can affect things, play around with this:

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-swing-the-election/

If nothing else changes from 2012, but Trump's share of the poorly-educated white vote shifts from Romney's 62-38 margin to 69-31, he likely wins. Conversely, if the (historically quite low) turnout among Hispanic voters sees a large jump, and a larger share goes to Clinton than Obama claimed four years ago, he has virtually no path to an Electoral College win.

It's part of the reason that negative politics is such a huge fixture: turnout is everything. There aren't many people on the fence, deciding between the two candidates. But there is an awfully large bloc of soft support who could be persuaded to turn up or stay home depending on how favourably they feel toward the one option for which they might pull the lever.

And yeah...it isn't coincidental that demographic change in the US has brought with it concerted efforts to suppress the votes of minority groups by Republican governors. If you can't win them over, do everything in your power to keep them away from the polls.

 

"If Trump wins, Europeans will have to grow up

As many people have pointed out, if someone had awoken from a coma after 30 years and learned that one US political party was in thrall to Wall St and the other to Russia, they would be confused by 2016. But then right is the new left and liberalism, being the prestige faith, is bound to attract prestige people, while Russia is back to its pre-Bolshevik role as the great force for reaction.

Some Democrats even believe that Donald Trump is in the pay of the Kremlin, although, then again, more than half of Democrats believe 9/11 was an inside job."

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/0...l-grow/?_ga=1.145463988.1473149130.1465986056

 

That 9/11 claim is wonderful cherry-picking. A single poll, conducted in 2006, where one has to take a very broad view of the data to begin with...22.6% stating that it was "very likely" and another 28.2% agreeing that it was "somewhat likely" that "the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action" is a far cry from "more than half believe it was an inside job". Particularly as no other polling that I can find suggests anywhere near that percentage.

Concerning the Trump/Putin links, his campaign manager was a long-time advisor of Viktor Yanukovych, his foreign advisor (who seems to be in large part responsible for Trump's 'pivot' on Russia) has made his bones helping Gazprom and is a cheerleader for the Putin regime, and Trump's own son has stated that Russian oligarchs (all of whom generally have close ties to the Kremlin) make up a large portion of the investor base for his businesses. He may not be in the pay of the Kremlin, but it ain't a conspiracy to suggest that there are unusually close ties there.

 

I'm at a point where I'm not even sure if Trump is the worst choice out of the two, I really feel for Americans.

 

Try reading this and the next article I'm going to post - extremely depressing in my opinion .....

http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/

 

I'm on a depressing roll this morning!! Wondering where I can move to in order to avoid the potential chaos of the next few years (and still be able to catch the Saints games!) .......

https://medium.com/@theonlytoby/his...ext-with-brexit-trump-a3fefd154714#.idwijndxc